Overseas human rights zealots hold sway over British courts

Chris Moncrieff

Some people have started to question why we bother to elect MPs to Westminster, when unelected outside forces, over whom we have no control, can tell our ministers what they can and cannot do.

The most glaring, flagrant example of this is the way human rights zealots overseas hold sway over the British Parliament, which is supposed to be a sovereign body.

If the Home Secretary Theresa May decides that a man who has committed murder or rape and is a general ne’er-do-well, should be kicked out of Britain, then her decision should be sacrosanct. But no, faceless, unelected bureaucrats from abroad, calling themselves judges, often reverse this decision, sometimes on flimsy grounds.

For instance one convicted killer was allowed to stay because he claimed that his human rights would be breached if he had to leave his cat in Britain. All I can say to that is: God help us.

So that means there are murderers and rapists walking the streets of Britain with impunity because these “judges” say their human rights would be breached if they were deported. What about the human rights of the victims of rapists, seeing their attacker free as a bird to possibly strike again?

There is controversy over May’s desire to ban Marine Le Pen, the French far right leader, from these shores. But she is told that “EU rules” prevent her from doing this.

You may disagree with Mrs May’s decision, but at least we voted her in and we can kick her out if necessary. Yet we have to succumb to the whims of overseas “judges”.

It is an intolerable situation and should be put right.

• A bitter attack on the way spin has corrupted the government’s news machine is made by Keith McDowall, a former top press officer, in a new book, Before Spin. McDowall was Willie Whitelaw’s press officer, when Margaret Thatcher’s right-hand man was sent to Northern Ireland to sort out The Troubles.

He writes: “Today I believe government credibility is on the line because the public seldom believes what the government tells it.”

I absolutely agree. No wonder politicians are mistrusted more than ever when spin is now a routine matter for them. But “spin” is really a euphemism for lying. Yet the public and, I regret, the media too, now accept this as par for the course.

All of which is a terrible indictment of the way politics, right across the spectrum, is run. Alas, it looks as though spin is here to stay.

• The Prime Minister should check his facts a bit more thoroughly before he criticises his political opponents.

In the House of Commons the other day, he congratulated Labour MP Ben Bradshaw for pronouncing the Ukip leader’s name as “Farridge”. This, said Mr Cameron was the English way of pronouncing it rather than “the poncey foreign-sounding one that he (Nigel Farage) seems to prefer”.

However, a while ago, a reporter asked Farage how his name should be pronounced. “I am not fussed,” Farage replied. “Pronounce it how you like.”

Touche.

Apart from which, it seemed a totally unnecessary thing for Cameron to say, anyway.

• According to reports, the recent two-day all-out strike by junior doctors, has left a “lethal backlog” of patients. No one should be surprised. But it underlines how stupid and irresponsible the strikers’ leaders were in vowing, beforehand, that no one would be in danger from this action.

These people are well on course to ruin the reputation of what should be a noble profession. But it does not look, when you see photographs of them chanting on their picket lines, as though they care.